The Search For Conor McGregor’s New Opponent Is On And Here’s Who’s In The Lead

The search for a replacement fighter for Conor McGregor on March 5 is on, with half the fighters in the UFC vying to face the brash featherweight turned lightweight. This whole thing kicked off early in the morning when Rafael Dos Anjos was forced to pull out of his fight with the Irishman at UFC 196 due to a broken foot. Since then the Twitters have been a flurry of activity.

Things are developing minute-by-minute on this one, but as it stands the frontrunners to face off against McGregor in two weeks are Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone and Nate Diaz. But Diaz wasn’t joking about making someone beg.

According to a source close to Nate, the UFC hasn’t offered him anywhere near enough money to make the cut to 155 and the company isn’t particularly interested in a 165-pound catchweight. Which is understandable considering McGregor is coming up from 145 pounds for the first time.

With Cerrone already committing to working with weight cut mad scientist Mike Dolce to make 155, there’s a good chance he’ll win the McGregor sweepstakes and get to fight the Irishman on March 5. That’s if Conor agrees.

The Notorious One has been completely silent as this mad scramble for a new opponent goes on. Who would he rather face? Is he willing to fight above 155 pounds? As McGregor said, he’s in the “do whatever the f*ck I want business” now, and any potential opponent has to be okayed by him. He’s shown he’s game to stay in the fight, but that doesn’t mean he’ll face anyone the UFC suggests.

Only reason I don’t want Nate is because I want a full multi-month buildup of Conor vs Diaz interviews. That feud would be wasted on a 2 week buildup period. Conor talked shit about Cowboy, and Cerrone won his last fight pretty easily. Let him fight while he’s still in shape

UFC wont let mcgregor fight pettis or anyone that can take the fight to the ground. they want someone to stand with mcgregor and trade blows since mcgregor ground game is really stiff and unpolished. im guessing cowboy will easily be their choice.

I agree it should be Cerrone, but my fear is that it will only add to the bound-to-pop balloon that is McGregor. I pull for anybody that fights McGregor, but Cerrone will probably walk into the octagon as a +700 underdog or better. Then again, Cerrone will be walking in as a “don’t care, just hand me a check” like he did with Olivera so…

Worldtour, you do realize that by your reasoning Pettis is exactly who they should give him. RDA has nasty grappling and ground game and close the distance supper quick. So by you reasoning his original opponent who backed out is who the UFC is protecting him from. Cowboy also has a slick ground game. I would rather see the mcgregor vs Diaz fight but I agree with an earlier post that it would be ashamed to miss all that pre fight hype and trash talk

MN6WS6 why do you always cheer against mcgregor? Him winning is really good for the sport. Cowboy and Frankie are two of my favorite fighters and I’d like to see Conor win. Think long term, imagine that mcgregor is first fighter to make $100 million like Dana white predicted now imagine that that trickles down to other fighters getting big pay days. 10 years from now when athletes used to only want to go NBA or NFL. They have the option for MMA because the money would be similar. Could you imagine someone with lebron or Blake Griffins body and athletesism fighting after years of training and not playing basketball. Those heavyweight fights would be epic

I don’t like McGregor because he is a hype train that’s been given the easy road to the title. His only legitimate opponent was Aldo, and he had already LITERALLY been gifted an interim belt because Aldo got injured. He runs his mouth entirely too much, has a padded record, and has avoided anybody that can derail his hype train. But, if the announcement in the other thread is true, I’ll be a McGregor fan on March 5th because the Diaz brothers are even worse than McGregor.